Philosophy 101

Welcome to Philosophy 101!

Hello everyone, and welcome! In this section, I will introduce you to the core concepts of philosophy and some of the most popular philosophical questions and subjects too.

I will first answer a few of the general questions that some of you may have, then I will proceed to introduce you to the central subjects or branches of philosophy.

I will merely touch the surface of these concepts. However, in each part, I will provide you with a link to an article where I explain the subject in detail, just click on the word in bold text and a new article will open.

I hope you enjoy!

What is Philosophy?

When people hear the word “philosophy” they think “Oh that’s not practical,” or “philosophy is dead!” They can’t be more wrong. Philosophy is extremely useful (when you know what it is), it has contributed a lot to society, from ethics and politics to more popular philosophies like stoicism which has been around for thousands of years.

Stoicism has touched many people, from emperors like Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor) to modern entrepreneurs like Tim Ferris.

Philosophy has gotten so big that it is now confusing and hard to understand what it actually is. Most people don’t have a clue about what it, and with good reason. Two hundred years ago, physics, chemistry, and related fields were under the name of “Natural Philosophy.“

After hundreds of years (literally), philosophy got so big that some of its branches were able to become independent.

My favorite definition of philosophy is: “It doesn’t answer questions. Rather, it discards answers.” Philosophy aims to answer the unanswerable, which is obviously not possible, yet it gives us an idea of what we are dealing with and gets us closer to the truth (if there is even such thing). By discarding wrong answers, we get closer to the actual ones, even though we may not be able to get them for hundreds of years to come.

So, isn’t philosophy absurd for trying to answer questions that can’t be answered? Not at all. We benefit a lot from contemplating possible explanations for phenomenon's around us. Humans are naturally curious about the world and the questions that philosophy tackles, like:

Why do we exist?

Why does anything exist?

What is the nature of existence?

Is our experience of the world close to the real world?

What is the meaning of life?

These questions, among many, many others, are fundamental to understanding our place in the world. While most of the above can’t be answered, we can at least get an idea of what is and what isn’t. For example, we don’t know what the external world actually looks like because our senses bias us. While we don’t know the actual look of the world, we are at least aware that our view is just perception, not reality.

Knowing that we don’t know is better than not knowing at all (I just made that up by the way).

So, by being aware of how little we actually know, we can get an idea of where we stand. And maybe we’ll be able to answer these questions with science and technology someday. (Like physicists did with determinism and the double-slit experiment, although I personally I’m not satisfied with the results).

Why do Philosophy?

Among many benefits, philosophy helps develop critical thinking, which allows us to question everything without settling for vague answers (like the ones the Greek people were telling Socrates thousands of years ago).

By acquiring the skill of critical thinking, you will be able to challenge all the assumptions given to you and form your own ideas and opinions, i.e. think for yourself.

Critical thinking is what helped the popular Greek philosopher Democritus 2500 years ago to imagine atoms. You heard that right. This guy thought about atoms thousands of years before they could even be close to being discovered by science.

Democritus thought that there should be something indivisible, so if we keep cutting and cutting any object, it will become so small that it couldn’t be cut again. This is the reason why atoms are named as they are. The word atom literally means “indivisible,” and indeed, they can’t be divided (except for unstable atoms in nuclear materials, but that’s another story).

I emphasize the importance of critical thinking because I believe that it is one of the most fundamental skills to have as a student, a professional, and in general.

Critical thinking allows us to think by ourselves instead of accepting pre-conceived answers about real problems and unanswered questions. It also helps us make our own minds about important things like morals and values instead of following another’s.

We are all Philosophers!

Believe it or not, we are all doing philosophy all the time. Whenever you use reason to make sense of something, you are philosophizing. For example:

Premise 1: I love fun activities.

Premise 2: Philosophy is a fun activity.

Premise 3: I love philosophy!

This example above is a simple syllogism, which is also called deductive reasoning or getting a result based on reasoning with various premises. Some philosophy professors actually consider philosophizing an activity (like Dr. Dave Warren from The University of Edinburgh).

Socrates

Philosophy is everything. It is that which was born when Socrates stopped attributing everything to the Gods and started reasoning, trying to find an explanation for everything that was happening around.

Back in the good old days, in Athens (around 2500 years ago), if there were a drop of water coming down from the sky, they would attribute it to the God of the drop of water. That is just how it worked. They had a God for everything their minds couldn’t comprehend nor explain.

Fortunately, Socrates was there to help them see the error of their ways. Unfortunately for Socrates, they were not ready to see it. The Greeks sentenced him to death for corrupting the youth into thinking reason instead of God.

Socrates was sentenced to death by drinking Hemlock poison, but he wasn’t ready to give up yet. Many argue that he was so intelligent he could’ve talked his way out of it. He could’ve convinced the jury of his innocence. However, he decided to die as a martyr, to teach his pupils a final lesson, rather than save himself.

The First Philosopher

I like to think of Socrates as the first truly curious mind, the first real philosopher. However, there is some guy named Thales of Miletus who is thought to be the first-ever to philosophize. Yet I dislike his theory about everything being made out of water. As you can imagine, this has already been disproved by now.

But Thales wasn’t the only one. There were also Anaximenes and Anaximander (I’m not kidding, those were their real names). They had similar theories about the earth being made of fire and such.

Anaximander, though, was a pretty smart guy and the first to conceive a mechanical model of the world. He thought that the earth floated in the center of the infinite, without any support (he was pretty close, kudos to him!)

Branches of Philosophy

Enough already, let’s get to the juicy part!

Philosophy has five main branches:

Epistemology (knowledge)

Ethics (morality, right or wrong, etc)

Aesthetics (art, beauty)

Metaphysics (ontology, nature of being)

Politics (political philosophy)

Traditionally, these are the main branches. Some add logic there, but I think it is not worth it since logic is essential and is already in every one of the above branches. There are, however, sub-divisions of these branches like ontology, morality, etc.

There are also divisions like continental philosophy and analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy is concerned with the analysis of thought, language, logic, knowledge, and mind. In contrast, continental philosophy is concerned with synthesis, synthesis of modernity with history, individuals with society, and speculation with applications.

Epistemology

We’ll start with epistemology, which is the study of knowledge. It is concerned with the methods and validity of knowledge and the distinction of belief and true knowledge.

But what is knowledge? Do we have any at all? These are some of the fundamental questions that epistemology aims to answer.

You may think you know a lot of things, but do you know what it means to know anything? Believing that you know something is not the same as actually knowing it.

So, what is knowledge?

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato argued that for something to be considered knowledge you need three things: a belief, a justification for that belief, and for that belief to be true (independently of your justification).

In other words, knowledge is justified true belief. For example, you know that there is an apple on your desk – For this to be true you need to believe there is an apple, it needs to be true that the apple is there, and you have to justify it.

Your justification may be that you see the apple with your eyes. Therefore it must be there. However, if it turns out that you are hallucinating and there is no apple, the third requirement wouldn’t be met, and that couldn’t be considered knowledge.

It seems pretty easy to identify what knowledge is, right? Not actually. How do you prove that there is actually an apple on your desk? You would need the scientific method and equipment to capture the beam of light that bounces from the apple with a new frequency (the color of the apple). Still, science is a human invention, and like everything human, it is fallible.

So, in reality, there is no way of knowing what is real and what isn’t, nor what is knowledge.

The Gettier Problem

Anyways, leaving this fact aside, philosophers agreed and accepted this definition of knowledge (that it is justified true belief, let’s call it JTB from now on) for a while. That is until the American philosopher Edmund Gettier got in the picture in the 1960s.

Gettier introduced the “Gettier Cases,” which are situations in which one can have JTB but not knowledge.

Ethics

Ethics (also called moral philosophy) is the branch of philosophy that studies human behavior. It deals with things like right and wrong, morality, virtue, and duty.

The usual definition of ethics is “the analysis and investigation of moral principles and dilemmas.”

It is essential to point out that there’s no absolute definition of ethics since it is continuously evolving. The Greeks, for example, associated it with an approach to live the “good life” (specifically Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics).

Later on, came the Judeo-Christians who used ethics as a means to be righteous before God and their neighbors.

The main objective of ethics is to serve as a guide for humans to choose the best action. Typically, “the best action” is relative to the theory of ethics that you follow or agree with. The most widely accepted approach is utilitarianism.

Difference Between Morality And Ethics

Morality and Ethics are closely related, and they usually are interchangeably in philosophy. The main difference is that morals refer to guides or principles, while ethics refer to rules and actions.

Simply put, ethics are rules and codes of conduct provided by external sources, such as religion, a government, or any other form of authority. Morality is an individual’s principles or sense of right and wrong. No one imposes these.

For example:

Imagine that John (an American) goes to a country where polygamy is prominent. In America, most people prefer monogamy since they were raised that way (that is their culture). John’s morals are different from the ethics of the country he’s visiting.

Moral Judgements

When we talk about moral judgments, we are referring to judging an action based on morality. So, for example, the discovery of gravity is not a moral judgment, but an empirical judgment. It is important to keep the distinction in mind.

There are empirical judgments, which are based on facts and experience. Then there are moral judgments. An example of a moral judgment would be: “Giving to charity is good,” while “murder is bad.”

Moral judgments are not objective. They are relative to culture or emotions.

To read more about ethics and ethics theories click here.

Also, check this one out: Trolley Problem: killing one person to save five? What would Kant do?

The Philosophy of Politics

Political philosophy is the branch of philosophy that examines philosophical questions about the state and its citizens. It tries to answer some common questions that come up about politics.

The Problem of Political Obligation

This problem is centered around the following question: “Do citizens have an obligation to obey the law?”

Everyday states make demands upon us. They require that we pay taxes, participate in a jury (sometimes), and on occasions, we even have to participate in wars.

Why do we have an obligation to obey the law?

To obey is not the same as complying. When we pay taxes just because the law says we have to, we are complying with the law just as we would do if a criminal points a gun at us and tells us to give them our wallet.

Most of us obey the law because we fear being punished if we do otherwise. In reality, we have an obligation to comply with the law. If we don’t pay income taxes, we would go to prison and would be unable to provide for our families. Therefore we are obligated to comply.

We comply with something when doing otherwise would result in a limitation to fulfill our responsibilities and duties.

But what is an obligation?

The literal definition is: “an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound; a duty or commitment.”

Another definition is: “a debt of gratitude for a service or favor.”

Gratitude or benefit is one justification for political obligation. This is one of the solutions mentioned by Socrates and Plato in one of the Platonic Dialogues.

So, for us to be morally bound to the state, we would need to owe something to the state. Because of the benefits that it has bestowed upon us, we are in debt, so we should obey them out of gratitude. However, in reality, we don’t owe anything. We all pay taxes, so everything they do for us is their duty.

It’s like having an employee. You pay your employees to work on something specific. They are obligated to obey you (to an extent) because you are paying him/her a salary. In the same way, we are paying the state, so everything they do is their obligation.

We are not obligated to obey because we benefit from the state, so why then?

The Consent Theory

Now, there is also the consent theory, which states that we are obligated because we consent to the state, but do we really?

For example, when we consent to drive someone to their office, we have an obligation to do so. The problem is that most of us don’t consent to the state’s laws.

Consent may imply an obligation to some extent. But in this particular case, most people have not given their consent. Most are not even aware of it.

If you are immigrating to a certain country, you are indeed consenting to their rules and laws. However, if you were born in that state, you didn’t give your consent! You weren’t even aware of the state’s rules to begin with.

These are only a few of the ideas that philosophers work with when analyzing such problems. If you want to read more about this, click here to open the full article.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics (also called Philosophy of Mind), as its name suggests, is about that which is beyond the physical realm.

One of the most iconic philosophers in the area of metaphysics was Descartes. He had a very particular opinion about how the mind worked.

Substance Dualism

According to Descartes, the mind is made from a different material or substance than the body. He stated that the mental and the physical are two very different substances. This is an ontological philosophy, and what it states is that the body and the mind are separate and exist independent of each other.

The substance from which our minds are made of is supposed to be immaterial. It can’t be touched by us nor be analyzed through science.

If you want to know more about Descartes’s substance dualism, check out this article we made:

Substance Dualism and Physicalism Explained

Ontology

Within the realms of Metaphysics, there’s also Ontology, which focuses on the nature of being. It is a branch of metaphysics, and professionals also use it as part of a research method.

There are a few interesting ontological arguments, one of them is “The Argument For God,” or “Anselm’s Argument.”

Ontology tries to answer a whole bunch of interesting questions concerning human existence like:

What is the nature of being?

Why do we exist?

How can we know that we exist?

Precisely, Descartes famous quote, “I think. Therefore I doubt. Therefore I’m” is his way of dealing with these questions. He thought that by doubting, one could confirm existence. He also believed that our senses are deceiving, and we should look for all the answers through introspection.

For a detailed explanation: What is Ontology? And Ontological Arguments Explained

Cartesian Method

This was Descartes’s method to attain real knowledge, and he thought it could only be achieved through being a skeptic or doubting one’s own systems of belief.

Immanuel Kant

Then came Kant to try and make sense of the Cartesian Method. Kant responded to this with transcendental idealism, which is basically a theory of how and why we perceive the world the way we do. Kant thought that we all shared some preconceived knowledge, which he called synthetic a priori knowledge.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with beauty, art, and taste. It also relates to how individuals interpret art.

Plato, for once, wasn’t a fan of art. He thought that art depicted the imaginary as real, and for a guy so obsessed with truth as he was, that is a big deal.

Plato had a point though, art does actually depict the imaginary, and it is also subjective. Art is defined as something that generates deep and intense emotions. Everything that communicates feelings to the audience is considered art.

Well, the 20th-century British philosopher R.G. Collinwood argued that art is usually used as an escape from reality or life, pure amusement, entertainment, a distraction.

Collinwood also thought that art is capable of changing the way we interact with the world. So he established a difference: Amusement Art and Magic Art.

Amusement art, as previously said, helps us escape reality and drives us to a fictional world after a stressful day.

Magic art, on the other hand, helps the audience learn how to better interact with this world’s reality like a great novel that helps us understand capitalism or something that is happening right now.

However, some people believe that this is totally subjective, and a work of art can be someone’s distraction and change someone else’s life at the same time.

Introducing Stoicism

Oh, finally, this is one of my favorites. While Stoicism is not a main branch of philosophy, it is one of the most useful philosophy ever created. In fact, it is the most practical philosophy in the whole world, or at least some believe it to be (including me, of course).

Stoicism is an ancient philosophical school, and one of the major ones founded in Athens after the death of Aristotle. The Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium was the founder. Take a mental note of this because most people confuse him with Zeno of Elea (the presocratic philosopher).

After Zeno’s death, Cleanthes (331-232 BCE) took over the school. Then came Chrysippus (probably the most famous of all stoics) and took charge. Sadly, most of Zeno and Chrysippus’ work was lost.

Fortunately for all of us, the stoics were quite famous among Roman writers whose work has survived. Some of them are the widely known Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, who were all stoics.

Marcus Aurelius

We are lucky to have the writings of these people. Marcus Aurelius, for example, was a Roman emperor who at the time could’ve had everything he wanted. He literally could’ve told his soldiers to bring him all the gold, wine, and women in the world, that’s how powerful he was.

But the emperor didn’t want any of that, what he wanted was to become a philosopher. He suffered a lot from being unable to quit his position, and he did so because he was aware of the consequences. At the time, most of the previous emperors were tyrants who burned people alive for fun. But Marcus Aurelius was different, he was a good emperor who actually did good things for his people.

The poor emperor had close to no friends, I mean, he was the most powerful man in the world (literally), so he couldn’t just be friends with the butcher next door, right? (for political reasons). He had no equal.

Nonetheless, he left a personal diary which was found after his death and is now a very popular book called “Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.”

It seems that the emperor fulfilled his dream of becoming a philosopher in some way. After his death, the texts were published and became quite popular over time. The sad thing is that he wrote it for himself, he had no interest in publishing, so it is quite confusing to read.

What is the Purpose of Stoicism?

The main objective of stoicism is to reach the state of apatheia, which is the absence of emotional reactions to external events. Reaching this state is fundamental to achieve eudaimonia (happiness in Greek terms), which was also considered the capacity of living well, or exercising the virtues perfectly.

The point of stoicism is to be free from the passions. As Hume said, “reason is a slave to the passions.” Most of our decisions are made based on reasoning, but that reasoning is being controlled by emotions.

Surprisingly, the stoics have a similar philosophy as those of Hinduism, Zen, and Buddhism, in the sense that they realize suffering comes from our thoughts, not actual events.

“Be the cliff against which the waves continually break but which stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.” -Marcus Aurelius.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The second Roman philosopher most popular in Stoicism is undoubtedly Seneca The Younger. He was a senator and advisor of Roman emperor Nero, one of the cruelest emperors to live. Seneca wrote a moral essay “On The Shortness of Life,” where he reminds us that our time is limited.

According to Seneca, we all need to treat time as a commodity (keep in mind that he was a millionaire). He thought that people are cautious with money and how they spend it, yet they waste time as it will never run out.

You don’t see people on the street throwing money away, right? That’s because we all know how valuable it is, we respect it. In contrast, we throw away our time, mainly because we are not aware that it is a finite resource.

Seneca argues that we need to invest our time in that which we enjoy the most, instead of spending it preparing for life, he invites us to live right now, to start doing what we enjoy and appreciate the limited time we have.

Seneca would probably hate people who think they can work until age sixty and then retire happily ever after. In reality, most people retire at 65-70, when the average life expectancy is 71 years old (nonsense, if you ask me). It is a tragedy how people postpone their “happiness” and stop themselves from doing what they really want to do.

He also encourages us to live for ourselves, instead of doing what is widely accepted so that we can feel part of society. The stoic philosopher hated the masses, he hated how most people live, or better yet, “exist.” Existing is not the same as living, you are living when you really enjoy your existence i.e. being alive.

I will write more about Seneca in the future, and I will make a list of the best 10 stoic teachings he has for us.

In the meantime, I leave you with this: Stoicism Core Concept’s